evolution

Thinking about God and the challenge of evolution

Thinking about God and the challenge of evolution

How do I, do we, do you, do other people, think about God (and Jesus)? I know I think differently about God from other people. We all have our own conceptual version of God. Churches, bishops, theologians, mystics, men, women, gay activists, homophobes, misogynists, etc., each have their own version of ‘God’. Some claim their version to be the unique, unquestionable, authorised, ‘true God’’. ‘He’ isn’t. It’s their version of a truth. We think we ‘know’ God, but we don’t. We know God in the same way we know ourselves and other people – partially, incompletely, and elusively.

Freedom from power, control and abuse in congregational life

Freedom from power, control and abuse in congregational life

I could never be a member of a group or congregation where people were expected to believe what the leaders taught, beliefs to be accepted without question. When I was in parish ministry, if people chose to come to church with their own particular set of beliefs, or with very fluid ideas about God and Jesus and faith, or with no particular belief at all, that was fine – typically Anglican.

Evolution and Energy Fields

Evolution and Energy Fields

For fourteen years I worked episodically, writing a book, attempting an inclusive account of evolution that placed the Hebrew and Christian narratives within a holistic, cosmic framework. It was an ambitious enterprise. I never managed to find a publisher. Perhaps elements of what I have written will eventually find their way into a simpler, more publishable book. Meanwhile, I will post sections of the book here, ingredients of my faith in unadulterated love.

Anticipatory Faith

Anticipatory Faith

Science has demonstrated that we live in a universe that is still awakening and is therefore open to new possibilities of being. An anticipatory faith looks at the universe as the primary subject of awakening. Until relatively modern times religions assumed that to find out what’s really going on in the universe, an ongoing transformation of hearts and minds was essential. Our own minds and hearts are required to undergo an extraordinary transformation to put us in touch with the deepest meaning of the cosmic story. Each of us can contribute to this cosmic awakening.

The 40th anniversary of a feral priest’s priesting

The 40th anniversary of a feral priest’s priesting

Forty years ago today I was ordained a priest by Bishop Mervyn Stockwood in Southwark cathedral. I have never marked the anniversary of my priesting before. This year I’ve become acutely aware that I am unable to mark the anniversary in the traditional way. What does it mean for me to be a priest now - a priest unable to preach, lead worship or preside at communion?

What do I believe? Paradigm thoughts of a feral Christian

What do I believe? Paradigm thoughts of a feral Christian

In the modern West, in Christianity, faith is still primarily about what people believe and how they behave. A person is in a right standing with God when they acknowledge the validity of certain conceptual truths and by living as God wants. The evolution of Christianity from the first to the third centuries and the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century has now become an existential crisis for Christianity. We have endured thirteen centuries of a new kind of religiosity, Nicene orthodoxy. It is at an end, this doctrinaire belief in theological niceties and certainties, the inherited orthodoxy and traditionalism.

A revolutionary or evolutionary moment?

A revolutionary or evolutionary moment?

People are identifying recent events as signifying the moment when the Church of England’s version of Christianity is being forced to face up to the expectation from within and outside the church that it must become a genuinely inclusive organisation modelling radical equality in gender and relationships in the context of ministry, practice and teaching. Some predict that a tipping point has been reached. What are the significant events that suggest this might be so?

Time for open conversation leading to good disagreement about the fundamentals

Time for open conversation leading to good disagreement about the fundamentals

We may think that there is just one version of Christianity that we who are Anglicans share with every denomination and all Christians. Not so - we are living with many versions of Christianity, not just within the variety of denominations, but within each denomination and within the Church of England. Within the church there is an invisible, underground, disconnected, boundary-crossing set of people who are letting go of orthodoxy and dogma. In my dreams this group will reach a critical mass as the reality of the ways in which people are reconfiguring faith becomes more widely known. It’s the great secret of the current decade that dare not speak its name, though it has been emerging for decades.

Come together – no escape for the Anglican fundamentalists

Come together – no escape for the Anglican fundamentalists

The ‘war’ that is being fought in the Anglican Communion over human sexuality, Biblical teaching, fundamentalism and the place of LGBTI people in God’s economy is having the opposite effect to that intended by Anglican Mainstream, GAFCON and the other conservative fundamentalist pressure groups. It is having the unintended effect of making people far more interested in one another and is spreading awareness of the presence of homosexuality in the human community. The continuing development of global communications and of a common understanding of the basics of what it is to be human and living in a global community will overcome the present divisions in Christianity around homosexuality. Meanwhile, we have plenty of challenging work to do to speed the coming of that day.

Living and loving in evolutionary times

Living and loving in evolutionary times

This is the blog it has taken me nearly three weeks to write because I knew that engaging with the hostile energy of the Peter Ould’s blog was futile. Our wisdom, attention, time, and creative energy needs to be focused not on engaging with those defending abusive, hierarchical, dogmatic ways of thinking and acting based on Scripture and an anthropomorphic idea of God but on the divine energy which is always evolving and flowing through creation and inspires people, despite the unfortunate endeavours of the church, to trust their feelings and intuition, marry the person they love, live with the person they choose, and share uninhibitedly the glorious liberty and freedom of creation in which the poor and disenfranchised are tenderly blessed by God, “the internal, the infinite, and unnameable”, to quote my young, wise South African friend Zinana.